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Naturalistic vs. Artifactual Semantics

      The artifactual thesis of the semantics of language is that the semantics of every descriptive term is determined by its linguistic context consisting of universally quantified statements believed to be true.

      This means that ontology, semantics and belief mutually determined.

      The contemporary pragmatist philosophy of science is distinguished by a post-positivist philosophy of language, which has replaced the traditional naturalistic thesis with the artifactual thesis of semantics. The naturalistic thesis affirms an absolutist semantics according to which the semantics of descriptive terms is acquired ostensively and is fully determined by perceived reality and the processes of perception.

      Thus on the naturalistic view descriptive terms function effectively as names or labels, a view that Quine ridicules with his phrase “myth of the museum” and “gallery of ideas”. Then after the meanings for descriptive terms are acquired ostensively, the truth of statements constructed with the descriptive terms is ascertained empirically.

      On the artifactual semantical thesis sense stimuli reveal mind-independent reality as semantically signified ontology. Sense stimuli are conceptualized as the semantics that is determined by the linguistic context consisting of a set of beliefs that by virtue of its belief status has a defining rôle for the semantics. When the beliefs function as test-design statements, they may occasion falsification of a theory.

      The artifactual semantical thesis together with the ontological relativity thesis revolutionized philosophy of science by relativizing both semantics and ontology to belief, especially empirically warranted belief. The outcome of this new linguistic philosophy is that ontology, semantics and belief are all mutually determined and thus interdependent.

      3.11 Romantic Semantics

      On the romantic view the positivist semantics may be acceptable for the natural sciences, but it is deemed inadequate for understanding “human action” in the behavioral and sociocultural sciences. Human action considered by the romantic social sciences has subjective meaning for the members of a group or society, because it is purposeful and motivating for their social interactions. Therefore the semantics for these sciences explaining human action must include description of the culturally shared subjective meanings and motivations that the human actions have for the social-group members.

      Romantics call the resulting subjective meaning “interpretative understanding”. The social member’s voluntary actions are controlled by this interpretative understanding, the views and values that are internalized and shared among the members of a social group by the so-called “mechanisms” of socialization and social control. This understanding is accessed by the social scientist in the process of his research. Furthermore if the researcher is a member in the society or group he is investigating, the validity of his empathetically based and vicariously imputed interpretative understanding is enhanced by his personal experiences as a participant in the group or society’s life.

      3.12 Positivist Semantics

      According to the positivist philosophy the ostensively acquired meanings of descriptive terms used for reporting observations are primitive, simple and fully determined by perception. These meanings were variously called “sensations”, “sense impressions”, “sense perceptions”, “sense data” or “phenomena” by different positivists. For these often called “phenomenalists” the sense perceptions are the object of knowledge rather than constituting knowledge thus making many versions of positivism solipsistic.

      In the case of a term such as “black” the child’s ostensive acquisition of meaning might involve the child pointing his finger at a present instance of perceived blackness in some black object we call a “raven” bird. And then upon hearing the word “black” in repeated presentations of several other black objects, he associates the word “black” with his various experienced perceptions of the color black. Furthermore from the several early experiences expressible as “That raven is black” the young learner may eventually infer intuitively by natural inductive generalization that “Every raven is black.” However, solipsistic phenomenalism makes sharing such experiences philosophically problematic.

      There are three characteristic theses in positivist semantics. They are:

      - Meaning invariance.

      - Analytic-synthetic dichotomy.

      - Observation-theory dichotomy.

      3.13 Positivist Thesis of Meaning Invariance

      What is fundamental to the naturalistic philosophy of semantics is the thesis that the semantics of observation terms is fully determined by the ostensive awareness that is perception. Different languages are conventional in their vocabulary symbols and in their syntactical structures and grammatical rules. But according to the naturalistic philosophy of semantics nature makes the semantics of observation terms the same for all persons who have received the same perceptual stimuli that occasioned their having acquired their semantics in the same circumstances by simple ostension. Thus the natural semantics of a univocal descriptive term used to report observations is invariant through time and is independent of different linguistic contexts in which the semantics may occur; it is primitive and atomistic. Positivists viewed this meaning invariance as the basis for objectivity in science.

      3.14 Positivist Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy

      In addition to the descriptive observation terms that have primitive and simple semantics acquired ostensively, the positivist philosophers also recognized the existence of certain terms that acquire their meanings contextually and that have complex semantics. An early distinction between simple and complex ideas can be found in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding by the seventeenth-century British empiricist philosopher John Locke. The positivist recognized compositional meanings for terms occurring in three types of statements: the definition, the analytic sentence and the theory:

      The first type of term having complex semantics that the positivists recognized occurs in the definition. The defined subject term or definiendum has a compositional semantics that is exhibited by the structured meaning complex associated with the several words in the defining predicate or definiens. For example “Every bachelor is a never-married man” is a definition, so the component parts of the word “bachelor” are “never-married” and “man”.

      The second type occurs in the analytic sentence, which is an a priori or self-evident truth, a truth known by reflection on the interdependence of the meanings of its constituent terms. Analytic sentences contrast with synthetic sentences, which are a posteriori, i.e., empirical, and are thus deemed to have independent meanings for their terms. The positivists view the analytic-synthetic distinction as a fundamental dichotomy between the two types of statements. A similar distinction between “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact” can be found in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by the seventeenth-century British empiricist philosopher David Hume.

      An example of an analytic sentence is “Every bachelor is unmarried”. The semantics of the term “bachelor” is compositional and is determined contextually, because the idea of never having been married is by definition included as a component part of the meaning of “bachelor” thus making the phrase “unmarried bachelor” redundant. Contemporary pragmatists such as Quine in his famous paper “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” reject the positivist thesis of a priori truth. Quine maintains that all sentences are empirical.

      3.15 Positivist Observation-Theory Dichotomy

      Positivists alleged the existence of “observation terms”, which are terms that reference observed entities or phenomena. Observation terms are deemed to have simple, elementary and primitive semantics and to receive their semantics ostensively and passively. Positivists furthermore called the particularly quantified sentences containing only such terms “observation sentences”. For example the sentence “That raven is black”

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